THE BOOK: GOLDFINGER
Author: Ian Fleming
Year published: 1959
Personal note: I saw the movie when it came out, and it made quite an impression on 6-year-old me. Throughout the book, I always saw Gert Fröbe as Goldfinger in my mind's eye, regardless of how he was described or what he was doing. (I also see a young Sean Connery as Bond in all these books.)
THE PLOT
Bond helps an old acquaintance frustrate a card cheat, who coincidentally turns out to be Bond's next assignment: Auric Goldfinger, who is somehow smuggling gold out of England. Bond's investigation leads to a high-stakes golf game and later enforced employment by Goldfinger, who intends to rob Fort Knox.
THE COMMENTARY
The story begins with Bond in the Miami airport, coincidentally running into one of the players who was at the table in Casino Royale, Junian DuPont. While I generally enjoy a nod to continuity, this chance encounter turns into a restaurant scene which turns into a game of two-handed canasta. I didn't dislike any of it, but in the end it's filler. I doubt we'll see Junius DuPont again, and since Goldfinger (mysteriously) doesn't take offense at being caught cheating, nothing of consequence happens. All of this — about a sixth of the story — amounts to an unrelated pre-credits sequence.
The upshot of all these scenes is DuPont asking Bond to find out how Goldfinger is cheating at cards. Why does that sound familiar?
Because a scene where Bond is asked to find out how a rich man is cheating other rich men at cards, only for the cheater to turn out to be Bond's next assignment, is a bit too familiar: It happened previously in Moonraker.
A side note: We never get an explanation for why Drax and Goldfinger cheat at cards, with nothing to be gained (both are multimillionaires) and with a lot to lose (a Big Scheme that would be jeopardized if they were arrested). Is it just for plot convenience/characterization, or is it Fleming's attitude that cheating at cards is a character flaw shared by all villains? I guess Dr. No would have cheated at cards, if he had had hands.)
As Bond tries to figure out how Goldfinger cheats, he asks Goldfinger to switch chairs with DuPont as an experiment. Goldfinger demurs, claiming to have agoraphobia, so he must face the hotel.
But plays cards on a rooftop. You don't have to be Freud to see that there's something wrong with this picture. If I were in the book, I'd say "Why don't we play inside, Mr. Goldfinger, with the other agoraphobes?"
Anyway, Bond figures it out, and finds Goldfinger's spotter in his hotel room, a hot chick named Jill Masterton. She's got binoculars and a radio to Goldfinger's "hearing aid" to help him win. (I can't imagine Goldfinger could win enough to pay for all the equipment and Jill's salary.) Bond breaks in on the radio, telling Goldfinger his name (that seems stupid), and orders him to lose a lot of money or Bond will go to the police. Goldfinger complies.
And seems to take no offense. Bond leaves with the hot chick.
This sequence of scenes is followed by some rigamarole about Bond doing "night duty." None of that is thematically related to the main story, and is throwaway filler. Although we do learn that he isn't dating Jill any more, who has returned to Goldfinger's employ. (Because going to work for someone you've betrayed is always a good idea.)
Then, finally, Bond get his assignment, and it's Goldfinger. Shock and surprise. He's supposed to learn how Goldfinger is smuggling gold out of Britain, and inform British authorities so they can arrest him, confiscate all his property, and extradite him to England.
Bond takes the case and figures his best approach is ... to play golf with Goldfinger. So he finally meets Goldfinger face to face, at Royal St. George's at Sandwich. At this point, we're more than a third of the way through the book. When, some readers might wonder, are we ever going to get to the point?
Sadly for readers who don't play golf, the pair do, in fact, play golf. The game takes two chapters. I am one of those non-golf readers, and while I was content to follow the first chapter, I was restless for the second.
But not because of my distaste for, and ignorance of, the game. It's because it was infuriating to see Goldfinger cheat and cheat and cheat, and for our hero to do nothing. Maybe it's because I'm an American and not British, but if somebody cheats me right to my face, I'm apt to be upset. I might call the proper authorities, or intimate physical violence. It's insulting for someone to cheat you, and barely hide it.
But Bond is unruffled. Is this what the stiff upper lip is all about? Because it sure looks like being a punching bag.
All's well that ends well, though, because Bond cheats better than Goldfinger at the last two holes. Sadly, this too is familiar. Bond nearly losing a lot of money at golf only to triumph in the end is much the same as Bond nearly losing a lot of money at baccarat only to triumph in the end (Casino Royale).
Goldfinger, instead of taking offense, invites Bond to his house. Goldfinger makes an excuse to leave briefly, so that his cameras can see if Bond searches the house. Bond bollixes up the video, but Goldfinger isn't fooled and has Oddjob give a demonstration of how quickly he can kill someone.
Instead of killing Bond outright. Just a thought.
This scene gives Goldfinger (and Fleming) an opportunity to discuss just how awful Koreans are. Granted, Fleming insults every ethnic group any chance he gets, but he seems to dislike Koreans in particular.
Fleming says Koreans "don't speak a word of any civilized language." So, obviously, Korea isn't civilized.
Goldfinger says they have no respect for human life. "That is why they Japanese employed them as guards for their prison camps during the war," he said. "They are the cruelest, most ruthless people in the world."
In another scene, we get this: "Bond intended to stay alive on his own terms. Those terms included putting Oddjob and any other Korean firmly in their place, which, in Bond's estimation, was rather lower than apes in the mammalian hierarchy."
There's more, but you get the drift.
This is followed by an endless car pursuit across Europe. I suppose this is the "exotic location" part of the book, but it just seemed to go on forever to me.
Especially since it was unnecessary. Once Bond figured out how Goldfinger was smuggling the gold, all he had to do was call M and his job was done. Let the police do the rest. That was actually said in M's briefing.
And when MI6 goes through Goldfinger's assets, they will discover the atomic bomb. Not only will Fort Knox be safe, but the Soviet/SMERSH connection will be revealed, resulting in a new, bigger, MI6 investigation. It could (and should) include Bond, and be a really cool story!
But no. Instead, we have Bond plunge stupidly into further unnecessary and dangerous investigation.
First, we get pages of Bond ruminating on how great it would be to meet a pretty girl on the road and have a picnic, and other schoolboy daydreaming. And then he meets a pretty girl, Tilly (who looks just like the one in his daydream), runs into her car on purpose, then takes her along on his dangerous mission. How old is he, again?
Eventually they part, but meet again when both are spying on Goldfinger. Well, he's spying. Tilly has come to assassinate him. And while they're forced together, Tilly tells Bond (and the readers) her story. Part of that is revealing that Goldfinger has murdered Jill Masterton by painting her gold and letting her suffocate by not leaving a patch at the base of her spine to let her skin breathe. (Fleming's science on this was faulty.)
The movie handles this better. Showing the murder on screen was pretty shocking (as opposed to Bond hearing it second-hand). It also demonstrated how evil Goldfinger is. It also gives Bond more motivation to take him down. And it answers the question of why Goldfinger doesn't kill Bond after the canasta humiliation: Because he had already taken revenge.
So the movie uses Jill's death dramatically, and also uses it to explain why Goldfinger leaves Bond alive. The book fails to do either of these things, and further, doesn't get around to explaining Jill's death until late in the book.
Also, Tilly tells Bond that she is Jill's sister, which the great secret agent failed to ascertain. (In the movie, he figures it out.)
Bond then gets captured — as noted, Bond always get captured — and Goldfinger kills him. He straps him to a metal table, sets a buzzsaw to cut through him crotch to head, and leaves.
No, wait! Goldfinger leaves him alive!
After Bond passes out (after admonishing himself for not being able to die on command and avoid this painful death), Goldfinger goes to great expense and trouble to fly Bond to Kentucky, drugging him and establishing him as mental patient, moving him past and through numerous customs agents and doctors who could trip Goldfinger up at any time.
Why?
It's established that Goldfinger is a killer, and a frequent one. He admits to having Oddjob kill his enemies routinely. He casually plans to kill 60,000 people in Elizabethtown and Fort Knox. And yet:
- Bond humiliates Goldfinger over the canasta game, but Goldfinger doesn't kill him.
- Bond out-cheats Goldfinger at golf, but Goldfinger doesn't kill him.
- Bond and Tilly Masterton have a sniper rifle, whose purpose is obvious, when they are caught. But Goldfinger doesn't kill them. Instead, he hires them both for secretarial skills that neither have been shown to have.
As Goldfinger says, "Once is happenstance, twice is a coincidence, but three times is enemy action." By virtue of Goldfinger's own philosophy, Bond is an enemy, and Goldfinger doesn't suffer his enemies to live. (He actually says that, or strongly implies it, when Bond is at his house and Oddjob destroys the mantlepiece.) Plus, he had two other scores to settle with 007. Bond being kept alive to be Goldfinger's secretary is ridiculous.
Even sillier, Goldfinger hires Bond and Tilly on to take minutes, type schedules, and so forth. Why? Does he not have anyone in his organization who can type? He can't hire a temp? And who says either Bond or Tilly can type?
Nevertheless, they are hired on as secretaries.
Bond and his Tilly are given rooms in a hotel-like suite, with two bedrooms connected by a bathroom for convenient canoodling. (Which they don't do.) When Bond walks into the bathroom, he notes "his washing and shaving things were neatly laid out."
"Wait," I thought. "I've read that line before. In fact, a couple of times before."
Thinking back, it happened when Bond and Honey were captured by Dr. No, and ensconced in some hotel-like affair. IIRC, it was same two-bedroom affair with a connecting bathroom, and Bond's shaving gear had been neatly laid out for him while he was unconscious.
In Casino Royale, Bond and Vesper Lynd had separate bedrooms in their vacation at the end, although I don't remember if the bathroom was connecting. I do remember Vesper unpacking for Bond, and him noticing that she neatly laid out his shaving things.
Have we discovered what Ian Fleming thinks is the perfect date?
Alternatively, Fleming seems to think a sleeping berth on a train is pretty romantic. We get that in Goldfinger (at the end with Pussy), Live and Let Die (with Solitaire) and From Russia, with Love (with Tatiana).
Those are the connecting rooms and sleeping berths I remember from the first seven books. I wouldn't be surprised if there are some I've forgotten. And I'm sure there are more to come.
As I say, a lot of elements are repeated in Bond books. I don't think this is one that should be repeated. When it comes to romantic fantasies, novelty is important.
It is at this point that Goldfinger finally trots out a plan that makes him a worthy Bond villain: He's going to rob Fort Knox.
But before he robs Fort Knox, we have a scene where Goldfinger monologs his plan to a bunch of American gangsters who made the scheme possible, by smuggling stuff Goldfinger needed cross-country, or where necessary, into the country. Which means we have to endure some really bad dialogue.
Not from Goldfinger, necessarily. But from the gangsters, who talk like what an upper-crust, 1950s Englishman thinks American gangsters talk like. Hint: It's not close.
Plus, all the organizations have cutesy names. We even get the "Spangled" mob again. (In general, American mobsters do not name their organizations for sequins and glitter.)
Then Goldfinger brings out his nuke, which is a pretty big deal for this late in the book. This is, in fact, what elevates Goldfinger to the big leagues, which even Fleming acknowledges with Bond's internal monolog:
"God Almighty! What had he gotten himself into? Bond looked back on the vista of his knowledge of Goldfinger. The first meeting with the naked brown body on the roof of the Floridiana Cabana Club. The casual way he had rapped Goldfinger's knuckles. The interview with M. The meeting at the bank at which it had been a question of tracking down a gold smuggler — admittedly a big one and one who worked for the Russians — but still only a man-sized criminal, someone Bond had taken trouble to beat at golf and then had pursued coolly, efficiently, but still as only one more quarry like so many others."
Precisely! This serves as a perfect description for the all the book before this, where Goldfinger is pretty small potatoes — a rabbit for Bond the fox. Had I been reading this book when it came out, I'd have been wondering until this scene why Goldfinger merited Bond's attention (and mine).
Finally, finally, finally, in the last few dozen pages of the book, we get to Fort Knox. It's to avoid pacing mistakes like this that we were taught in high school to always do an outline for our papers, and why journalists are taught to use the inverted pyramid — to reference the most interesting information in the lede to keep the reader on the hook. Fleming buries the best part of the book at the very end, with virtually no hints earlier about it.
Anyway, there are other problems. Like thousands of people pretending to be dead (and leaving babies unattended) at Fort Knox. That's a lot of good acting by a lot of non-actors! Many of them teenage conscripts! But the hardest thing to swallow is that Goldfinger never checks a single one to make sure they're dead. Nor do any of Goldfinger's confederates take an interest in any of the bodies, even when they're moving them out of the vault by stretcher.
Then there's using an atomic bomb to blow a safe. that's, uh, lemme think of the word ... oh yeah, insane. Maybe it made sense in 1959, when atomic radiation just gave you super-powers. One gangster does bring up "the — er — fall-out," but Goldfinger assures him that his atomic bomb is "the latest model." Oh, well, that's different, then.
In the midst of this, Oddjob kills Tilly. It takes place late in the book, and it's almost offhand. In retrospect, it seemed to be clearing the board for Bond to sex up Pussy. I don't recall Fleming ever having more than one female lead before, so maybe he just didn't know what to do with Tilly, except knock her off.
But before that, Tilly had exhibited some same-sex longing for Pussy Galore, which gave us Fleming's assessment of homosexuality (through Bond):
"Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterson was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and 'sex equality.' As a result of 50 years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits — barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to to dominate and the men wanting to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but had no time for them."
Yep, you give women the vote and all of a sudden you get "pansies" springing up everywhere. What were we men thinking?
But then there's Pussy herself. Fleming describes her a lesbian who leads an all-lesbian gang.
But later, when Goldfinger captures Bond and Pussy is flying the plane, she sends him a note: "I'm with you." Why the change of heart? She didn't get enough characterization for me to even guess.
And then at the end, she falls enthusiastically into Bond's bed. Again, why?
Actually, it took my wife to tell me why. She said, "Do you think Fleming even knew what a lesbian was?"
Then it all snapped into place. No, of course he didn't! The modern definition of lesbian is "denoting or relating to women who are sexually or romantically attracted exclusively to other women, or to sexual attraction or activity between women." When Fleming said "lesbian," I interpreted it as anyone in the 21st century would, with emphasis on "exclusive."
But Fleming was a man of an earlier era, where today's labels had yet to be created. And in his era, homosexuality was still considered a mental illness. So he established that Pussy had been raped as a 12-year-old, which was reason enough, in his mind, to create a "lesbian," which he thought was a woman knocked off the "normal" path by trauma.
And all that was needed to "cure" her was a real man — i.e., Fleming's stand-in, James Bond.
To a degree, I agree with him. I think Pussy's childhood trauma is important. She needed to address it, and heal herself.
But no, she wasn't a lesbian, as we now understand the term. She was heterosexual, but traumatized, and was suffering from PTSD or worse. She avoided triggers, like sex with men. Until Bond came along, that is, and she found a way to deal with her demons.
Even that is a stretch, but at least it's one that makes more sense than Bond "curing" a lesbian by his awesome maleness.
Meanwhile, Bond and Pussy are on a hijacked plane. His solution is to break a window, so that Oddjob gets sucked out due to explosive decompression. Weirdly, Bond is closer, but Oddjob gets the suck. Explosive decompression isn't usually that selective, but hey, plot armor can be pretty heavy.
Pussy and Bond survive, and she wants to have a lot of sex with him.
STRAY BULLETS
- Bond gets a lot more characterization in this book than in previous ones, and it feels like Fleming finally had a handle on his lead character. This, if nothing else, makes Goldfinger required reading for Bond fans.
- The lead character is named for Hungarian architect Ernő Goldfinger.
- It has always been implied that Bond is a modern St. George, battling the dragons that threaten England. In this book, he actually refers to himself as St. George, the patron saint of England, and thinks that St. George better get going.
- I'm intrigued by Bond's rising distaste for blood. In at least two scenes he's caught musing about the ugliness and permanence of death. "Now there is someone, now there is no one," he thinks of the Mexican he killed. And how there will be an empty seat at some family's dinner table. I have to wonder if this is going somewhere, or if it's just going to be a thought Fleming visits in each book.
- At one lunch or another, Bond has a pineapple surprise (pronounced "soo-preese" in French). I wonder if that's the inspiration for La Bombe Surprise, the name of the cake that Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd serve to Bond and Tiffany at the end of Diamonds Are Forever — a cake with a bomb in it. "What's in it?" asks Tiffany. "If I told you, there'd be no surprise" responds Mr. Wint. I still laugh at that joke.
- I doubt this is news to anyone who's read Metal Men, but "auric" means "of or containing gold" in chemistry. (The chemical abbreviation for gold is AU.) So Goldfinger is "Goldy Goldfinger."
- "Grand Slam" is a term in a number of sports, but they all derive from the same source: contract bridge. In bridge, a Grand Slam is when one bids and makes all 13 tricks. I assume Fleming named "Operation Grand Slam" from his knowledge of bridge, and not, say, baseball.
- World War II connection: The Sarin nerve gas Goldfinger is going to use ("GB") was developed by the Nazis.
- World War II connection II: The Japanese men who are going to put the gas into Elizabethtown's water supply are implied to be remnants of the Imperial Japanese Army.
- Pussy Galore says she's not into men because she's "never met one." That's a great line. So great, in fact, that Frank Miller stole it and gave it to Selina Kyle more than 25 years later in Batman: Year One.
SUMMARY
I was less impressed with this book than the last one, Dr. No, which is the first Ian Fleming book that impressed me with its writing.
This one, sadly, is poorly paced: The book is chopped up into set pieces that don't fit together well, and the hook is buried. Another flaw is that unnecessary elements from previous books are repeated. For another, there are plot points that make little sense even for a Bond book. And finally, perhaps because I was looking for tangible reasons to be dissatisfied, the 1950s prejudices struck me as more exaggerated than usual.
I didn't hate Goldfinger, despite all these complaints. It just felt like it needed some interstitial material to tie the extraneous scenes together, and additional characterization to explain some of the inexplicable decisions. Fleming keeps the action moving and is better than a fair hand at description. He just needs an editor to erase the speed bumps he places before the reader.
THE MOVIE
Date: 1964
Director: Guy Hamilton
Writers: Richard Maibaum, Paul Dehn
Stars: Sean Connery (James Bond), Gert Fröbe (Auric Goldfinger), Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore), Shirley Eaton (Jill Masterson), Tania Mallet (Tilly Masterson), Harold Sakata (Oddjob), Bernard Lee ('M'), Martin Benson (Solo), Cec Linder (Felix Leiter), Austin Willis (Simmons), Lois Maxwell (Moneypenny), Bill Nagy (Midnight), Michael Mellinger (Kisch), Peter Cranwell (Johnny), Nadja Regin (Bonita), Richard Vernon (Colonel Smithers), Burt Kwouk (Mr. Ling), Desmond Llewelyn ('Q'), Mai Ling (Mei-Lei).
Notable Songs: "Goldfinger" was composed by John Barry, with lyrics by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse, and performed by Shirley Bassey. The soundtrack album topped the Billboard 200 chart, and reached No. 14 in the UK Albums Chart. The single for "Goldfinger" reached No. 8 in the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 21 in the UK.
THE PLOT
Bond is assigned to observe Auric Goldfinger, and in the process, discovers he's cheating someone at cards. He ends the cheating, which humiliates Goldfinger. Then Bond is officially assigned to find out how Goldfinger is smuggling gold. Bond meets Goldfinger for golf, humiliating him a second time. Then Bond pursues Goldfinger across Europe, and discovers how he's smuggling the gold. But he is captured, and is a prisoner as Goldfinger executes his master plan: robbing Fort Knox, while killing Bond in the process. Bond must figure out how to stop Goldfinger and save his own life.
THE COMMENTARY
What the movie does better than the book
In the book:
Bond introduces himself to Goldfinger over Jill's radio, which is foolish.
In the movie:
Bond remains anonymous. Instead, Oddjob tracks Jill to Bond's room (or maybe they're in Jill's room). At any rate, Goldfinger finds out who Bond is through his own resources in the movie, not Bond simply telling him. And he knows who Bond is from the get-go, instead of finding out at the end, which is much more in line with his "criminal genius" characterization.
In the book:
In the card game, Goldfinger says he has to keep the same seat because he's an agoraphobe, and has to face the hotel. If he was an agoraphobe, he wouldn't be on a roof in the first place.
In the movie:
He won't move because he has a "lucky seat." Yes, it sure is! Also, the mark, "Mr. Simmonds," responds "You and your suntan!" So Goldfinger has established affable reasons for never changing seats, which are much more plausible than agoraphobia. You can assume if someone gets shirty about changing seats, he'll just quit the game.
In the book:
We find out about Jill's death late in the game, and second-hand. Tilly gets killed at the end, at Fort Knox. These are throwaway deaths, almost utilitarian, so that Bond is free to hook up with Pussy.
In the movie:
Bond discovers Jill's dead body right after the card game. Tilly gets killed shortly after her introduction. In both cases, Bond feels guilty, and hates Goldfinger personally. It's fridging, sure, but it serves the purpose of fridging perfectly: It motivates the hero and raises the stakes.
In the book:
Goldfinger's caddie is a random, crooked club employee.
In the movie:
Goldfinger's caddie is Oddjob, which makes the scene work a whole lot better. Not only is Bond's acquiescence to Goldfinger's cheating more explainable (Oddjob is a pretty threatening presence), but it makes for a tighter narrative.
In the book:
Fleming uses many words to describe Goldfinger's love of gold.
In the movie:
During the golf game, Bond drops a gold ingot as Goldfinger is putting. Goldfinger misses the putt, evening the game, but more importantly, we get a tantalizing glimpse of the gold reflected in Goldfinger's eyes, and Gert Frobe's perfect expression of ... lust? Need? It's hard to pin a word on it.
In the book:
Fleming describes Goldfinger as almost being cheerful after his first two losses to Bond, and because Bond is so clever, he hires him. This flies against human nature and common sense. Goldfinger should have hated Bond, but even failing that, should have killed Bond many times over before Operation Grand Slam begins out of caution, because he is described as meticulous, careful and lethal. It doesn't make sense that Bond is alive by the time we arrive at Fort Knox.
In the movie:
Goldfinger is visibly chagrined by Bond outfoxing him at cards and golf. (Gert Fröbe is fantastic demonstrating this with nothing but facial expressions.) Goldfinger kills Jill to get revenge on Bond. While in the book Goldfinger is weirdly fine with Bond always screwing him over, in the movie he hates Bond. The only reasons he doesn't kill him are 1) his Chinese patrons are alarmed at what Bond might know, and 2) he wants to keep Bond alive long enough to be blown up by an atomic bomb — it's cruel, and he wants to be cruel to men he hates.
In the book:
Goldfinger is about to execute Bond with a buzzsaw aimed at his groin. Bond essentially gives up, and curses himself for not being able to will himself to die. Because he's a quitter!
In the movie:
The movie handles this better, with a laser in place of the buzzsaw (whose utility we later see), and Bond doesn't give up — he cleverly leverages what little he knows (the words "Operation Grand Slam") to make Goldfinger think his replacement (008) would be even more dangerous. (Or, perhaps as importantly, Goldfinger's Chinese partner is alarmed by what Bond is saying, as he visibly reacts. Goldfinger may be just placating that guy until he doesn't need the Chinese troops any more.)
Plus, this scene gives us one of the most immortal dialogue exchanges in the history of cinema:
Bond: "Do you expect me to talk?"
Goldfinger: "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die."
In the book:
Goldfinger and his people have plenty of time to check the fallen soldiers and civilians to see if they're dead. It's implausible that nobody does, even just out of curiosity.
In the movie:
The movie moves much more swiftly, so there's no time to check the dead, and the fakers stop faking much sooner.
In the book:
In the 1959 book, Goldfinger is using an atomic bomb to crack a safe, and pooh-poohs the idea of fallout. Which we know today to be ridiculous.
In the movie:
Evidently they knew it was ridiculous in 1964, too, because in the movie Goldfinger isn't cracking the safe to steal the gold — he's simply setting off an atomic bomb there, counting on the fallout to irradiate the gold and therefore make his own gold more valuable. Much better plan.
In the book:
The mob bosses' dialogue is terrible. The gang names ("Spangled Mob") are pretty bad, too.
In the movie:
The dialogue isn't good, but at least it doesn't stand out as atrocious. The competing mobs are denoted by location — "Chicago," "West Coast" — instead of silly names.
In the book:
Bond gets word of Goldfinger's plot to the U.S. authorities by hiding a note in an airplane commode. Implausibly, this works.
In the movie:
It is Pussy Galore who alerts the U.S. authorities, which makes a lot more sense than a note in a toilet. (Bond does try the note, but it gets destroyed in a car crusher.)
In the book:
Pussy changes sides without explanataion.
In the movie:
She is shown warming to Bond, which is a nice way of saying she has sex with him.
But that alone doesn't explain her switching sides. Why would she give up all the gold she was promised, and which she has promised to her girls?
I think it's much easier to believe that after sex, Bond simply told her that A) the gas will kill everyone, and B) Goldfinger's plan is to irradiate the gold.
To Pussy, that means A) she's going to be a mass murderer, when previously she thought she was just robbing a bank, and B) Goldfinger has no intention of paying her the gold he promised, and is much more likely — given what happened to the gangsters — to kill her and her girls.
No, the movie doesn't tell us this directly. But given how the scheme plays out after Pussy contacts the authorities, it's easy to walk back to this interaction.
In the book:
Goldfinger really does plan to steal a lot of gold bullion. He has trucks and everything. But, as Bond notes in the movie, that gold is way too heavy to transport. Even with trucks and everything.
Further, those trucks aren't going to get very far when the authorities catch on (which they would pretty quickly when 60,000 people fall down dead and switchboards get slammed in neighboring communities). Goldfinger's plan to take a train to Norfolk (that's about 700 miles) and escape on a Soviet sub doesn't seem very well thought out, either.
With thousands dead, the authorities are going to go into emergency mode, closing down highways, train tracks, airports and docks. Everything mobile is going to be stopped and searched. The Mexican and Canadian borders will be sealed, and no doubt those countries will be on the alert as well. Certainly a Soviet sub at a U.S. naval station is going to be under surveillance. The USAF and every National Guard in every state is going to have planes up looking for things that can transport gold — like trains and big trucks. And everyone's going to be really, really angry. I don't like Goldfinger's chances.
And even if some mobsters get away with a lot of gold, they're going to find very quickly that they have nowhere to sell it, because every police force, the NSA, the CIA and the FBI will be on the lookout for exactly that.
In the movie:
Goldfinger doesn't plan to steal tons of gold. He just lets the mobsters and Pussy think he's going to. Instead, he's going to irradiate it, and have his Chinese friends get him out of the country. Everyone else in Operation Grand Slam is going to be dead, and he says he figures a conservative estimate is that his own gold will rise in worth by a factor of 10. This is a much better plan.
What the movie does worse than the book:
In the book:
Goldfinger is allied with SMERSH and the Soviets. This is more in keeping with the Cold War milieu, and ties in with the other books well. Goldfinger's henchmen and killers in the book are Koreans, presumably North Koreans, given the recent war. Which makes sense.
In the movie:
Fearing to anger the Soviets, Eon Productions never used the Russians as the bad guys. In this movie, the foreign enemies are the Red Chinese (we had yet to recognize Red China in 1964). That makes little sense, since China didn't yet have the resources or the motivation to pull off something like this. And instead of homegrown American mobsters, who need no explanation, we have Chinese troops, whose arrival is unexplained. (How do hundreds of heavily-armed Chinese nationals get to Kentucky in 1964 with no one noticing?) And instead of uniforms they wear identical jumpsuits, which not only look silly, but make them look like extras from Dr. No.
Only Oddjob is Korean, which begs the question of why he isn't Chinese.
In the book:
Goldfinger recruits the mob bosses to help him with the robbery, and kills the one dissenter.
In the movie:
Goldfinger uses the mob bosses to assemble his resources. Then he gathers them together and sells them on his plan, with an elaborate show-and-tell involving rotating floors, hidden maps, a convertible pool table, various lighting tricks, and more. He kills the one dissenter.
And then he kills all of them. What th--!?
Why did Goldfinger go to the expense and effort of setting up that elaborate dog-and-pony show, and then murder the audience?
Why have a separate plan to kill the one dissenter, requiring a lot of Oddjob's time, owning or leasing a pneumatic press, having someone who knows how to use the press (or teaching Oddjob to do so), having a second car ready for Oddjob to return, when Goldfinger could have just left Solo in the pool room to die with the others?
Why kill allies for no reason, alerting anyone who isn't Chinese (like Pussy Galore) that they are probably in for the same treatment?
I'm guessing the mob bosses were there because the briefing scene was a big one in the book, and the filmmakers felt like they had to make a nod to it. (Also, the plan had to be explained to the audience.) But since the scene was going to be made moot immediately, it was an unnecessary and baffling detour.
In the book:
The dissenter has a couple of torpedoes with him, like all mob bosses do. So when Goldfinger kills him, he has to have a plan to kill the torpedoes as well. (Which he does.)
In the movie:
The dissenter, Solo, is defenseless and not the least paranoid. He has no protection, no bodyguards, and isn't even suspicious that Oddjob is his driver. How did this guy ever live long enough to be a mob boss?
STRAY BULLETS
- Jill and Tilly Masterton are changed to Mastersons in the movie.
- Shirley Bassey can really belt out a song, can't she? We watched Goldfinger on Paramount+, and during both the opening and closing credits we had to turn down the volume on Shirley.
- When people are pretending to be dead at Fort Knox, one quick scene shows Felix and his unnamed partner. "They're going to have to find a way to bring Felix back to life," my wife said matter of factly.
- This Felix (Cec Linder) was pretty forgettable. The actor is originally from Poland.
- Despite playing an Englishman, Gert Fröbe (Goldfinger) was originally German.
- Everybody in America learned you can suffocate by using too much body paint in 1964. Which turns out to not be true.
- Honor Blackman (Pussy Galore) was British and starred in Britain's The Avengers for 43 episodes. She preceded Diana Rigg on that show, who later co-starred in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
- When the atomic bomb is stopped, the timer reads "0:07." That made an impression on me as a child.
- Oddjob's imperturbability was also memorable to a youngster.
- Sean Connery is much less embarrassing when he flirts than Roger Moore.
- Bond stepping out of a wetsuit with a white tuxedo on underneath also left on an impression on young me.
- The car-crushing scene made an impression on young Joan. She had never seen a pneumatic press before.
- In the book, Bond stops a heroin operation in Mexico involving a British national. In the movie, the Latin country he's in is unnamed, but heroin is mentioned.
- Bond treats Dink (Margaret Nolan) pretty badly (dismissing her curtly, slapping her bottom), but maybe that was normal then.
- Felix chides Bond for letting the Mexicans (or whoever) get close to killing him. "They got closer to you in Jamaica," Bond replies, a wink toward Felix losing an arm and a leg in To Live and Let Die, which had not yet been filmed. (And Felix didn't suffer his shark attack until a later movie anyway.)
- Felix is keeping an eye on Bond for M, he says. Since when does the CIA run errands for MI6?
- When Bond reads his assignment, he says " 'Auric Goldfinger.' Sounds like a French nail varnish." That made me laugh.
- The mutual disrespect between Bond and Q is established here. Bond is irritated by Q's pedantic explanations, and Q is irritated by Bond destroying all the equipment he provides. In later movies the two are always irritated with each other, but sometimes no reason is provided.
- Desmond Llewelyn's Q is defined here. "I never joke," he says, in dead seriousness.
- Bond gets his Aston-Martin here.
- The tracking device in the movie is superior to the one in the book. But then, the movie was filmed five years after the book was written, and technology improves.
- Bond uses sleight-of-hand twice in this movie, a Sean Connery go-to that Roger Moore didn't seem to do. The first time is when he switches the golf balls, which in the book was done by the caddie. The second time is when he slips a note into Solo's pocket, which doesn't happen in the book at al.
- Bond notices Tilly Masterson's case where she keeps the disassembled sniper rifle she had used in the previous scene (on Goldfinger, but nearly hitting Bond). Bond recognizes it for what it is, because he had used one in the previous movie! He asks her if she's in Europe to do some hunting, because he "had a case just like that one." He also notices the initials on the case ("T.M.") don't match up with the name Tilly gave him ("Tilly Soames"). That lie later twigs him to who she is.
- When Bond is unloading Tilly's luggage, he pulls out the sniper case and Tilly snaps "I'll take that!" Bond says sardonically, "I'm sure." This is fun.
- In the movie, Bond and Tilly are caught by radar. In the movie, by a tripwire.
- When Felix and his partner are introduced, and in a couple of later scenes, they're at a Kentucky Fried Chicken joint. I guess the screenwriters needed something that said "Kentucky." But by 1964 Kentucky Fried Chicken had more franchises than McDonald's, according to their website, so it sure wasn't limited to Kentucky. The name was changed to KFC in 1991.
- This movie worked the "James Bond Theme," the "007 Theme" and the "Goldfinger" song into the soundtrack throughout, in various tempos. This may be the greatest soundtrack in history!
- When Bond gets on the plane at the end, he asks Felix if he can get a drink on board. "I requested liquor for three," Leiter says. "Who are the other two?" Bond asks. "There are no other two," Leiter responds. Ha! Earlier Leiter's partner asks what Bond's up to, and Leiter responds, "If I know James, it involves a dame or a drink." Fun.
- On the plane, Goldfinger has a golden gun. Wait, isn't that a different book? :)
- On the plane, Goldfinger gets sucked out a window by explosive decompression. In the book, that's Oddjob's fate. Bond kills Goldfinger with his bare hands.
SUMMARY
It may be partly nostalgia, but I love this movie. Great action, clever dialogue, a strong plot and some of the best actors to grace a Bond movie.
Replies
And by "unnecessary," I mean that the book could end right where Bond figured out how Goldfinger was smuggling the gold — as the "armor" plating on his car.
This same gimmick was used in the Speed Racer two-parter "The Race Against the Mammoth Car" (first broadcast May 14th -May 21st 1967)
From what I can tell, Goldfinger made it to Japan by 1965, so perhaps the show's writers nabbed the idea.
It's established that Goldfinger is a killer, and a frequent one. He admits to having Oddjob kill his enemies routinely. He casually plans to kill 60,000 people at Fort Knox.
Speaking of implausible plots, in the Gilligan's Island episode "Ring Around Gilligan", the evil Doctor Boris Balinkoff (Vito Scotti) planned to use the mind-controlled Castaways to rob Fort Knox.
Using an atomic bomb to blow a safe is insane. Well, it probably made sense in 1959, when atomic radiation just gave you super-powers. One gangster does bring up "the — er — fall-out," but Goldfinger assures him that his atomic bomb is "the latest model." Oh, well, that's different, then.
To my mind, this is moronic even by 1959 standarfs.
Otherwise we're to believe that Bond, through sheer awesomeness, converted her sexual identity.
Wasn't homosexuality still considered a mental illness in those days?
"Grand Slam" is a term in a number of sports, but they all derive from the same source: contract bridge. In bridge, a Grand Slam is when one bids and makes all 13 tricks. I assume Fleming named "Operation Grand Slam" from his knowledge of bridge, and not, say, baseball. (Bridge is much older than baseball.)
Seconds of internet research tell me that the rules for Contract Bridge were codified in 1925, although Bridge-like games date back to the Sixteenth Century.
As far as baseball goes, the Abner Doubleday story is almost certainly untrue. The first baseball game as we know it dates to 1845, Baseball is said to be derived from older English games like rounders , which is said to have been played since Tudor times (a 1744 written reference to the game called it "base-ball", although the name "rounders" superceded it) and cricket, which dates back to the late Sixteenth Century.
All that aside, as far as I can tell, the phrase "grand slam" does originate with Contract Bridge.
Honor Blackman
She would later play the ambitious (and somewhat careless) thremmatologist Profesor Lasky in the Doctor Who story "Terror of the Vervoids" (First broadcast Nivember 1st - November 22nd, 1986) opposite Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor. (By comparison, Diana Rigg didn't make it into Who until 2013.)
When Felix and his partner are introduced, and in a couple of later scenes, they're at a Kentucky Fried Chicken joint. I guess the screenwriters needed something that said "Kentucky." But by 1964 Kentucky Fried Chicken had more franchises than McDonald's, so it sure wasn't limited to Kentucky. The name was changed to KFC in 1991.
I remember when I was a kid (about forty-five to fifty years ago) being in Canada with my parents and noticing that in Québec, "Kentucky Fried Chicken" was called "Poulet Frit à la Kentucky". Apparently, it's called "PFK" up there, now.
Because this is the James Bond book I recommended that you read (when I thought you were going to read only one), I decided to read it along with you. Although I have read it now four times, I discovered two things: 1) I am much more familiar with the movie than the book, and 2) Every change they made for the movie (of which there were many) were changes for the better. Tomorrow I will read your thoughts.
I finished reading Goldfinger (this most recent time) on February 26. I didn't take notes, but there are a few things I know I want to say (if Cap doesn't mention them himself), and I'm counting on Cap's commentary to remind me of what they were in any case. Let's get started!
THE BOOK:
"I was less impressed with this book than the last one"
Fair enough. Upon re-reading it, I think I might have been conflating my memory of the book with my memory of the movie.
"I was concerned that my distaste and ignorance of golf would be an issue. It wasn't."
I really liked the golf game. You previously mentioned how much you enjoyed the bridge sequences (in Moonraker, was it?) because you are familiar with bridge, but wondered how non-bridge players would react. I don't play bridge or golf, but I enjoyed Fleming's descriptions of both. In the book, Fleming takes us through the entire 18 holes, but the movie (wisely) condenses that to only three. Also, the movie's three hole are quite different than the books and move the plot along in a visual manner (dropping the gold bar, it reflecting in Goldfinger's eyes, Goldfinger missing the shot).
"Obviously, a lot of elements in Bond books are repeated"
I suspect, maybe, if you had read just Golfinger you would have liked it more than you do. When I was 14 (or whatever), I didn't necessarily read the books in order the first time, and I'm fairly certain I started with Goldfinger, my favorite (JB) movie (then and now).
"And we never get an explanation for why Drax and Goldfinger cheat at cards"
I think you pretty much nailed it: it's "just for plot convenience/characterization" and it is "Fleming's attitude that cheating at cards is a character flaw shared by all villains."
"I guess Dr. No would have cheated at cards, if he had had hands."
BWAH-HA-HA!
"Bond's shaving gear had been neatly laid out for him"
As George Carlin once noted, if you fall asleep in a house where a woman is present, when you wake up you will be covered with a blanket (or something to that effect).
"Implausible plot points"
Speaking of "implausible plot points," maybe I'm getting ahead of the discussion, but the movie points out how implausible it is to steal the gold from Fort Knox. (Making it radioactive to increase the value of one's own may not be all that plausible, either, but it's more entertaining.)
"Using an atomic bomb to blow a safe is insane. Well, it probably made sense in 1959"
In his "Galactic Empire" novels, even Isaac Asimov postulated an Earth that could be partially radioactive (and walked it back decades later).
"It's implied she's a lesbian"
I think it's more than implied. Goldfinger describes her gang, the Cement Mixers, as "a Lesbian organization." Also, "Bond liked the look of her. He felt the sexual challenge all beautiful Lesbians have for men." I think it is implied that Tilly is: "Bond thought [Pussy] was superb and so, he noticed did Tilly Masterson who was gazing at Miss Galore with worshipping eyes and lips that yearned. Bond decided that all was now clear to him about Tilly Masterson."
While I'm thinking about it, I also have a "favorite" anachronism (such as "a negress driving a car" from Live and Let Die) from Goldfinger, about Lesbianism: "Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterson was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought that they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and 'sex equality'. As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy, sexual misfits--barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men wanting to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them."
EDIT: I'm typing my reactions as I read, and I see now you anticipated my example.
Wow, could that possibly be any more politically incorrect? Honestly, I can hardly wait to read what the new PC editions do with that. I have heard that "Pussy Galore" is to be renamed "Cooter Aplenty." ;)
"I assume Fleming named 'Operation Grand Slam' from his knowledge of bridge"
Undoubtedly (but I'm sure it won't surprise you to learn I thought "baseball" when I was 14).
"Pussy Galore says she's not into men because she's 'never met one.' That's a great line. So great, in fact, that Frank Miller stole it and gave it to Selina Kyle more than 25 years later in Batman: Year One."
I was going to point that out if you didn't.
"Also, what's with killing Jill Masterson off-screen?"
Yeah, that's a huge improvement the movie made over the book. I think a lot of the success of Goldfinger specifically (and even James Bond in general) is the striking image of Shirley Eaton being painted head-to-toe in gold paint... well, not entirely head to toe. As Goldfinger did in the book with his other women, they left a strip (unseen by the camera) so the skin could breath. Tilly explains: "He has one woman a month. Jill told me this when she first took the job. He hypnotizes them. then he--he paints them gold... Jill told me he's mad about gold. You know--marrying it. He gets some Korean servant to paint them. The man has to leave their backbones unpainted. Jill couldn't explain that. I found out it's so they wouldn't die. If their bodies were completely covered with gold paint, the pores of the skin wouldn't be able to breathe. then they'd die."
But is such a thing really possible? Over the years I have found as many sources that say "yes" as those that say "no." In the book, a skin specialist told Tilly that "It had happened to some cabaret girl who had to pose as a silver statue." Even Fleming related that it happened to "some" cabaret girl, which tells me it happened only once. So I conclude that it might happen, but if you plan to murder someone, you might want to choose a more reliable method. Speaking of "implausible plot points," I've often wondered how, exactly, someone (Oddjob probably) managed to paint Jill (under the circumstances) anyway. She had just betrayed her boss. did he drug (or kill) her first, before painting her? Surely that would have come out in the autopsy. Why wasn't Goldfinger and/or Oddjob investigated for murder before the story even left Miami? In the book, though, her murder wasn't even immediate; it happened later, after they had left Miami, offscreen as you said.
THE MOVIE:
It is said that Cubby Broccoli got the idea for the movie's distinctive opening credits sequence when his wife walked in front of the projector while he was screening home movies.
"WHAT THE MOVIE DOES BETTER THAN THE BOOK"
Wow, you have a whole section dedicated to differences between the book and the movie (which is what many of my thoughts are about). Let's see if I spotted any you missed.
"We find out about Jill's death late in the game, and second-hand. Tilly gets killed at Fort Knox."
Both Jill and Tilly played larger parts in the book than they did in the movie.
"Plus, this scene gives us one of the most immortal dialogue exchanges in the history of cinema"
...and another reason, in addition to the image of a naked woman painted gold, James Bond became a cult phenomenon. Since you anticipated my favorite line of dialogue from the movie, I'll tell you my second favorite. Before Oddjob knocks him unconscious in his Miami hotel room, he says to Jill, "My dear, drinking a martini not properly chilled is as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs." (I love James Bond and I love the Beatles, but I approve of the fact that Bond himself is not a fan.)
"Either way, it's a bit much to assume that because she chooses to have sex with Bond that she's going to switch sides"
Because the next book in the series is a collection of short stories, readers do not learn the details of how Bond and Pussy came to part ways... at least not until Anthony Horowitz's 2015 (non-canonical) Trigger Mortis.
"This Felix (Cec Linder) was pretty forgettable."
In previous discussions I have identified my favorite of the seven actors who have assayed the role and promised I would reveal my least favorite when the time came. This is it.
"On the plane, Goldfinger gets sucked out a window by explosive decompression. In the book, that's Oddjob's fate. Bond kills Goldfinger with his bare hands."
Also, in another memorable visual, Oddjob is electrocuted when removing his metal-brimmed hat from a wall of bars when James Bond touches a livewire to it.
Okay, I think that pretty much covered everything on my list except...
THE 1964 FORD MUSTANG: When Goldfinger was released in 1964 the Ford Mustang was a brand new model car and the movie served to "introduce" it to America.
This same gimmick was used in the Speed Racer two-parter "The Race Against the Mammoth Car" (first broadcast May 14th -May 21st 1967)
More of an homage than a swipe, I should think.
Speaking of implausible plots, in the Gilligan's Island episode "Ring Around Gilligan", the evil Doctor Boris Balinkoff (Vito Scotti) planned to use the mind-controlled Castaways to rob Fort Knox.
I probably saw every episode of Gilligan's Island, but I stopped watching the reruns in junior high and don't remember them with the clarity you do. They are part of the gestalt of the '60s, so I appreciate you tying in the appropriate episodes.
To my mind, this is moronic even by 1959 standards.
As noted, this was fixed in Goldfinger the movie. Maybe screenwriters and/or producers learned their lesson from Dr. No the movie, where a nuclear reactor melts down adjacent to Jamaica, thanks to Bond, harmlessly. I'm sure somebody got an earful.
Wasn't homosexuality still considered a mental illness in those days?
Ooh, good point! I try to remember when watching these old movies the state of the world at the time, and how it might play into the story without being explicitly mentioned, because it would be general knowledge -- like when Castro took over Cuba, when the Korean War was fought, when we recognized Red China, etc. But I hadn't thought of this one!
According to Psychology Today, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Second Edition), published in 1968 (four years after Goldfinger) listed homosexuality as a mental disorder. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a mental disorder, but replaced it with "sexual orientation disturbance." Not until 1987 did homosexuality completely fall out of the DSM.
So when Fleming wrote about "pansies" he had some medical backup. Still, blaming homosexuality on women voting is quite a stretch.
As far as baseball goes, the Abner Doubleday story is almost certainly untrue. The first baseball game as we know it dates to 1845, Baseball is said to be derived from older English games like rounders, which is said to have been played since Tudor times (a 1744 written reference to the game called it "base-ball", although the name "rounders" superseded it) and cricket, which dates back to the late Sixteenth Century.
Ancestors for bridge include whist, triumph, trump, ruff, slam, ruff & honors, whisk & swabbers and whisk. I honestly don't know when they all started, and cricket may precede them. Proper bridge, as you note, goes back to the 16th century (1529, according to the American Contract Bridge League), and American baseball to the mid-19th century. Although "base-ball," as you note, goes back to the 17th.
She would later play the ambitious (and somewhat careless) thremmatologist Professor Lasky in the Doctor Who story "Terror of the Vervoids" (First broadcast Nivember 1st - November 22nd, 1986) opposite Colin Baker's Sixth Doctor. (By comparison, Diana Rigg didn't make it into Who until 2013.)
Ha! I wonder where else both of these ladies appeared. If I was better at Excel I'd run a sigma on their CVs.
Here's an interesting tidbit I ran into while researching this stuff, which you probably know, Bob, but others might not. When creating the character Emma Peel, the raison d'etre for the character in what we now call a writer's room was "men's appeal." This was shorthanded in scripts and conversation to Samantha Peel, or Mantha Peel. That wasn't shorthand enough, so they shortened it to "M. Appeal." When they finally got around to officially naming the character, they stuck with M. Appeal. (M. A. Peal. = Emma Peel)
In Québec, "Kentucky Fried Chicken" was called "Poulet Frit à la Kentucky."
Those French have a different word for everything! It's like a different language or something!
Upon re-reading it, I think I might have been conflating my memory of the book with my memory of the movie.
As you'll see below, I did the same. In our defense, it's a very good movie.
In the book, Fleming takes us through the entire 18 holes, but the movie (wisely) condenses that to only three.
Agreed! As I said, I thought the golf game was one chapter too long in the book. It was play a hole, Goldfinger cheats, play a hole, Goldfinger cheats, play a hole, on and on and on. Fleming should have restricted himself to the last three or four holes, but I don't get the impression Fleming self-edited much.
... dropping the gold bar, it reflecting in Goldfinger's eyes, Goldfinger missing the shot ...
Ooh, I forgot to mention the reflection in the eyes. So well done. It says everything the book spends many words saying about Goldfinger's obsession with gold in one shot.
I suspect, maybe, if you had read just Goldfinger you would have liked it more than you do.
No doubt. Or if I had just read any one of the first seven books, instead of all of them. But the point of this exercise is going through all the books, so I will gamely continue to do so.
I think it's more than implied. Goldfinger describes her gang, the Cement Mixers, as "a Lesbian organization." Also, "Bond liked the look of her. He felt the sexual challenge all beautiful Lesbians have for men."
You said earlier that you may have conflated the book with the movie, and I did so here. Fleming did say Pussy was a lesbian, but I was remembering the movie, where it was implied but not stated. (Even so, I was a bit uncomfortable about Bond forcing himself on Pussy in the hay -- until she started participating, that is, with evident enthusiasm. That's movie-ese for consent, so I stopped worrying about it. In the real world, on the other hand, it might be rape, and she's just pretending to enjoy it to get it over with, but really just lying back and thinking of England.)
I've corrected my commentary. Thanks!
I have heard that "Pussy Galore" is to be renamed "Cooter Aplenty."
Bwah-ha-ha! Or "Poon-Tang Surfeit."
I'm sure it won't surprise you to learn I thought "baseball" when I was 14.
Not at all, since I made the same assumption at 6.
If their bodies were completely covered with gold paint, the pores of the skin wouldn't be able to breathe. Then they'd die. But is such a thing really possible? Over the years I have found as many sources that say "yes" as those that say "no."
Either way, it became received wisdom in 1964. I remember discussing it on the playground in the years that followed. We were all certain it was true, because movie/adults said it was true.
And I think being covered in gold or gold paint while you're unconscious -- as you note, movie Jill would probably have to have been knocked out, from the lack of struggle -- probably would kill you. Either from your nose and mouth being blocked while you were too unconscious to do anything about it. Or from toxic shock, in the case of gold paint. In the case of gold, it might be heavy enough to collapse your lungs or damage other vital organs.
"My dear, drinking a martini not properly chilled is as bad as listening to the Beatles without earmuffs." (I love James Bond and I love the Beatles, but I approve of the fact that Bond himself is not a fan.)
Another thing I forgot to mention, but yes, agreed. Bond (like Fleming) would not like The Beatles, at least not in 1964.
Because the next book in the series is a collection of short stories, readers do not learn the details of how Bond and Pussy came to part ways... at least not until Anthony Horowitz's 2015 (non-canonical) Trigger Mortis.
I know I'm not there yet, but it's going to be a long time until I get to Trigger Mortis. Does Horowitz address the lesbian issue?
When Goldfinger was released in 1964 the Ford Mustang was a brand new model car and the movie served to "introduce" it to America.
Another thing I forgot to mention! I made a mental note when I saw Tilly in the '64 Mustang, but didn't write it down, and forgot. But I'm very familiar with the Mustang, because I was alive and aware of adults talking about it when it came out -- and it was my first Hot Wheels car, at my request! To this day, when you say "sports car," I mentally flash on the '64 Mustang, which was so cool.
I still want one.
It occurs to me that there was another episode, "The Invasion", in which Gilligan dreams that he is "Good Guy Spy 014' (i.e., tice as good as 007.)
Captain Comics said:
"Does Horowitz address the lesbian issue?"
"Pussy Galore was waiting for him in the kitchen, wearing an oversized man's shirt and nothing else. As he came in, she turned and looked at him with the extraordinary violet eyes that had first attracted him when he'd met her at the warehouse in Jersey City barely more than two weeks ago. then she had been the head of a lesbian organization, The Cement Mixers, brought in by Auric Goldfinger to help him pull off the heist of the century. As things had turned out, the two of them had become allies and then, inevitably, lovers. The conquest had been particularly satisfying to Bond who had initially recognized in her that untouchable quality, a refusal to be loved. He had desired her the moment he saw her, walking towards him in a well-cut suit, holding her own in a room full of mobsters. He examined her now; the black hair carelessly cut, the full lips, the decisive cheekbones. It was hard to believe that this was a girl who had felt nothing but suspicion and hatred towards men until he had come into her life."
Pussy remains in the book for five chapters until their inevitable breakup.
"I thought the golf game was one chapter too long in the book. It was play a hole, Goldfinger cheats, play a hole, Goldfinger cheats, play a hole, on and on and on."
You said you pictured Gert Fröbe in your mind's eye as you read the book, regardless of Fleming's description. So did I, except during the golf game when I pictured "Auric" Trump.
I would rank Goldfinger, the novel, in the middle of the pack. While Goldfinger the movie is top of the heap. I wasn't allowed to see the movie when it was originally released but there was enough playground talk about it that I had a pretty good handle on the films primary points - the gold painted girl, Oddjob and his deadly derby, the laser gun etc. When I finally saw the movie in an early Seventies re-release I was not disappointed. This is the movie where the Bond formula was finally in place and would remain the template for the series for the next 30 years or so.
A bit of trivia regarding the fantastic soundtrack - George Martin was the producer on the Shirley Bassey recording session and Jimmy Page played guitar on the track.
Oddjob being sucked out of the window, although Bond is closer. Explosive decompression isn't usually that selective.
Racism on the part of Mother Nature?
Yep, you give women the vote and all of a sudden you get "pansies" springing up everywhere. What were we men thinking?
I was a teenager (16) when I read Goldfinger shortly after seeing its movie version. I don’t remember these anti-Gay and anti-Korean clearly-expressed views. Maybe at the time I was aware of and against anti-Black views but not yet knowing a wider world I just didn’t notice it? Always being a Democrat but being raised by Tories who became Republicans, my Leftward movement was steady but slow.
I doubt this is news to anyone who's read Metal Men, but "auric" means "of or containing gold" in chemistry. (The chemical symbol for gold is AU.) So Goldfinger is "Goldy Goldfinger."
IIRC, it is stated (by M?) that this is not his real name. Since he worked for the Russians in the book, was he actually a Russian?
Then Bond is officially assigned to find out how Goldfinger is smuggling gold.
For context, when the book and later movie came out more restrictions were in place regarding the possession and sale of gold bullion. I don’t know how this worked in the UK, but from 1933 to 1974 it was illegal for U.S. citizens to own gold in the form of gold bullion, without a special license. Apparently, this was in reaction to the very rich buying too much gold in reaction to the 1929 Stock Market Crash. The nation was still on the Gold Standard and this affected the reliability of U.S. paper money, which was then in the form of “gold certificates. “
People could expect to have their paper money exchanged for actual gold. The Gold Standard ended in 1934. “Silver certificates” replaced “gold certificates,” which could be expected to be exchanged for silver. U.S. paper money was changed from silver certificates to “Federal Reserve notes” in 1964, which was also the last year that circulating coins contained silver. (Aren’t you glad you asked?)
Bond stepping out of a wetsuit with a white tuxedo on underneath also left on an impression on young me.
This beginning scene is IMO the best of the series.
In the book, Goldfinger suffocated Jill Masterson by covering her in gold. In the movie, it was gold paint.
I don’t remember this difference. This explains why it was “off screen” in the book, because it would have been a hideous burning death.
When Felix and his partner are introduced, and in a couple of later scenes, they're at a Kentucky Fried Chicken joint. I guess the screenwriters needed something that said "Kentucky." But by 1964 Kentucky Fried Chicken had more franchises than McDonald's, so it sure wasn't limited to Kentucky. The name was changed to KFC in 1991.
Chains seem to spread geographically. In 1964, the first Kentucky Fried Chicken I had ever seen was in this movie. When the Army sent me to Virginia in 1968 I saw my first 7-11 convenience store. Walmart didn’t make it to California for quite a few years.
When Bond gets on the plane at the end, he asks Leiter if he can get a drink on board. "I requested liquor for three," Leiter responds. "Who are the other two?" Bond asks. "There are no other two," Leiter responds. Ha!
This was a terrific gag.
On the plane, Goldfinger gets sucked out a window by explosive decompression. In the book, that's Oddjob's fate. Bond kills Goldfinger with his bare hands.
The movie gives Oddjob a similarly impressive end. The sucking end (and the slowness of it) for Goldfinger are much more satisfying. The book’s strangling of Goldfinger is repeated later for another big bad.
Fleming should have given Goldfinger the more imaginative end. Peter Benchley, who wrote Jaws and The Deep, had a similar blind spot. In his book Jaws he had an icky relationship between the police chief’s wife and what would become Richard Dreyfus’ character. Not only that, but the end for the shark was a rip off of Moby Dick. In The Deep, he wastes a horrible moray eel death on a henchman. In the movie they use it on the main bad guy.
Jeff of Earth-J said:
Wow, could that possibly be any more politically incorrect?
“Politically incorrect” is a phrase used by right-wingers to mean “correct, but offensive to the Left.”
"It had happened to some cabaret girl who had to pose as a silver statue." Even Fleming related that it happened to "some" cabaret girl, which tells me it happened only once.
Fleming would find interesting things in newspapers, such as the body paint, being sucked out of airplanes and flying with jet packs and put them in his books.
THE 1964 FORD MUSTANG: When Goldfinger was released in 1964 the Ford Mustang was a brand new model car and the movie served to "introduce" it to America.
I was a sophomore in high school in 1964. When I walked up to school my English teacher, who was middle-aged, showed me her new Mustang, which was parked on the curb. If it had been my biology teacher, who was much younger, I might have had an embarrassing chemical reaction.
Captain Comics said:
According to Psychology Today, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (Second Edition), published in 1968 (four years after Goldfinger) listed homosexuality as a mental disorder
Fleming did note that Pussy had been raped as a child. I think being sexually abused has been known to turn a woman off men (even if not already preferring women) or to be in the life experience of many prostitutes. In the current lawsuit, Trump’s rape of the adult E. Jean Carroll has caused her to never have an intimate relationship since then.
Fleming did say Pussy was a lesbian, but I was remembering the movie, where it was implied but not stated.
I don’t think that in 1964 the movie would have been allowed to do more than hint that Pussy and her gang were lesbians.
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